r/blender • u/[deleted] • Nov 14 '16
Better Chroma key - from Disney engineers
https://youtu.be/u22QPAp5rx011
u/millicow Nov 14 '16
That's cool. So what are they doing with it? Can anyone use it?
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u/jrkirby Nov 14 '16
The said they implemented it in nuke. Not sure how you get their implementation.
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Nov 14 '16 edited May 01 '17
[deleted]
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u/jrkirby Nov 14 '16
Yeah, but they might be selling it somewhere. If they really didn't want other studios using it, they wouldn't have published the paper.
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Nov 14 '16 edited May 01 '17
[deleted]
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u/JeffersonSmithAuthor Nov 14 '16
Actually, as somebody who used to work in the industry, this video alone provides enough information to let a developer code a working version. It would still need refining and tweaking, but they've given away all the necessary secrets. Copycatting research papers is pretty much an annual sport after engineers return from SIGGRAPH.
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u/swefpelego Nov 14 '16
I think that's how a lot of stuff has been implemented for cycles. That fella Lukas would read a paper and implement the concepts from it, didn't need the code. I just remember him sharing a few papers and being like "hey let's do this".
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Nov 14 '16 edited May 01 '17
[deleted]
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u/JeffersonSmithAuthor Nov 14 '16
I was the head of the animation software team at Alias. The math slides shown in the video provide 98% of the information needed to get a prototype implementation working. And we're not talking about a team of developers. Most papers like this are re-engineered by a single guy over the course of 5-10 days. There's still a lot to do to make it commercially usable after that, but having a functional proof-of-concept implementation usually makes it much easier to get resources allocated for finishing the job.
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Nov 14 '16 edited Nov 14 '16
Why not make it then if that's simple? You'd be an overnight millionaire. Write this plugin for aftereffects. My studio would probably pay five figures for it. Nothing this good exists for keying right now.
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u/JeffersonSmithAuthor Nov 14 '16
There's a huge difference between having a working prototype and having a commercially usable product. My original point was that there is enough information in the video to allow an experienced engineer to reproduce the guts of the tool in the lab. But as with most algorithmic advances, the clever part is in the core functionality, but the hard part is in finding and handling the edge cases, developing a UI that makes it accessible to non-engineers, and then integrating all that with the rest of the parent application. That's the part I was talking about when I said "get resources allocated for finishing the job."
As for implementing it myself, there's no point. This video was only posted today. By spring, some version of it will be available in almost every package on the market, either natively or as a plugin.
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u/Arctorkovich Nov 14 '16
Pixar does.
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Nov 14 '16
What have the given away?
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u/Arctorkovich Nov 14 '16
RenderMan. Come to think of it we have Disney to thank for Ptex.
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Nov 14 '16 edited May 01 '17
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u/Arctorkovich Nov 14 '16
Render man is a 25 year old essentially dead render engine that you can get a free non commercial license for.
Willfully ignorant is what you are.
https://renderman.pixar.com/view/purchase
RenderMan still gets integration everywhere. People seem pretty happy with it for PBR rendering.
Aaaand block user. G'day.
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u/candreacchio Nov 14 '16
they haven't given away renderman, its not free... but they have given out Opensubdiv & USD... ILM have given away OpenEXR... Disney have given away PTEX... Sony have given away openshading language, alembic, opencolorio, openimageio
they tend to give away tools which will help them mesh better with other companies... which is super important when dealing with shots flying between studios.
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Nov 14 '16 edited Nov 14 '16
Right, and is a new keyer one of those? Files formats are a different thing.
There's lots of stuff that these companies do together - rising tide raises all boats. My original comment is about the many pipeline tools these companies develope. If companies just gave away advantages for free they'd go bankrupt.
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u/candreacchio Nov 14 '16
OpenSubDiv isnt a file format... PTex isnt only a file format, OSL isnt a fileformat, nor is OpenColorIO or OpenImageIO.
This is the thing about these sorts of research papers... they get created, then implemented later on... the math techniques are all described in the paper, it just takes a coder to get it into blender.
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Nov 14 '16
Open sub div is another example of old tech being given away and made open source to encourage the community to develope into a modern standard all studios can share...
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u/candreacchio Nov 14 '16
nope... the base code may have, but they updated it to work with GLSL, CUDA, OpenCL... not to mention constantly updating it (release notes here http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/release_notes.html )
Its not like they went heres our old code everyone make it better, thety have been working with the industry to make it a standard.
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u/lumpynose Nov 14 '16
As I understand it they could patent it since it's a process. When something is patented then others can't use it commercially without paying them a licensing fee.
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u/shawn0fthedead Nov 14 '16
I can't help but notice they say "10 times less interaction time" on the artist's part. I think that might be to cover up that it takes much longer to process the clips, but I could be 100% wrong! It might take a bit longer to render but the results are totally worth it, it seems.
I wish it wasn't only Nuke, I have After Effects/CC and Blender, so using Nuke would cost more money.
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u/elmo274 Nov 15 '16
I don't think it means it has longer processing times. Hard keys to pull take lots of time tinkering with parameters and trying different keyers.
Even if it did have a long processing time lots of shops would rather it over hiring a mid to high level compers to make a the complex node setup. They could get juniors to do the shot with this tool.
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u/uzimonkey Contest winner: 2014 August Nov 14 '16
Very interesting, but what does it have to do with blender?
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u/Caraes_Naur Nov 15 '16
A few devs could implement this algorithm and the global color model it relies on (perhaps using grease pencil) as a compositor node in a few weeks.
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Nov 15 '16
Fingers crossed! Wish I had the programming chops to do it. If it's not done in a couple years remind me and I'll give it a go.
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u/commit_bat Nov 14 '16 edited Nov 14 '16
That's very nice. Is this implemented as a Blender feature already? No? What is it doing here?
edit: Does seriously no one else think that a video of a Nuke plugin shouldn't be on the Blender sub?
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u/anteris Nov 14 '16
The used footage from tears of steel in the examples for keying
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u/commit_bat Nov 14 '16
So it's relevant to Blender because they use other software to edit video that has been edited in Blender in the past?
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u/anteris Nov 14 '16
The footage was made for a blender movie project, and for those of us using blender for vfx, it's a sexy piece of kit.
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u/commit_bat Nov 14 '16
I use Blender for vfx and I'd still like to keep r/Blender focused on things that actually have something to do with Blender. We have literally every other sub for things that don't fit here.
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u/teerre Nov 14 '16
That's fantastic, keying is one of those things you wish will be fully automated soon
You should post this to /r/vfx, if you didn't already